Feather sexing

So after a couple of google searches i decided to try my hand at feather sexing. How it works is there are primary feathers and secondary/covert feathers on the wings. if the covert feathers are shorter than the primaries at 3 days old then the chick should be a pullet. if both sets of feathers are pretty equal its a rooster. So with this knowledge i tried my hand at sexing them.

This photo to the right is the best example which shows that little yellow chick should be a pullet.

This next one was the

white chick. Little white chick wasn't looking 100% the last couple of days and passed away yesterday. This is its wing feathers which show it was likely to have been a rooster. this was my favourite chick.

the pale legged chick is also likely to be a pullet

and the last one pale yellow with orange legs should be a boy though its wing feathers were more confusing.

Only time will tell.

4 little chickadees

4 days ago the chicks started hatching. The first didn't make it but the next 4 were healthy. finally yesterday another was born but there were problems during hatching and she/he bled a bit and didn't make it through the night. The chicks are all light sussex and are varying shades of yellow/white. they are adorable. Unfortunately the broody can be a little rough and heavy so i am looking into another breed for brooding next time. I'm sure it will ease my stressing over it all.

I'll be trying my hand at feather sexing today.

and then there were 14.

Its bloody hot. 36 degrees in Maleny today. Especially due to the weather i went home to check on Broody. Good think i did as the rest of the chooks were very low on food and water. While i was changing the water for the other and i had Broody cop open to cool down, my other light Sussex, Cordelia, started harassing broody. out she hopped cluck, clucking away and then i saw the mess below her. it seemed that an egg had broken all over a few of the eggs, but where was the shell? the mess was fresh, and then I saw Broody had shell attached to her. luckily the egg didn't have a chick inside and was only a little icky. So in the sweltering 1pm sun i was cleaning up a few of the eggs to prevent contamination. So now we are down to 14 eggs. I'm feeling pessimistic. What if its too hot. i now know that one egg was no good which is fine statistically but not in my head its not. with 1 day to go i'm feeling unsure. i really hope we at least have a couple of live healthy chicks. oh and it was a polish egg that had cracked open. well at least we'll know soon.

I've also prepared the coop for the chicks. so the litter tray is gone and now there is a nice clean floor. will just have to get some shallow dishes for the food and water now.

Introducing Adonys

I'd like to introduce you to Adonys. Adonys was born on the 6th of July 2011. This was an exciting litter for me. A friend who has helped me out so much from a distance in the online world had carefully planned this litter. The first litter for her breeding prefix Alyosha. The sire is her lovely beautiful boy Boris who has been awarded many BOBs, in Groups and in Specialty Show awards. Mum Sonya is absolutely stunning also and both dogs have lovely temperaments.

Adonys was second born and one of 12 in the litter. yes thats a big litter. I wanted one of these pups from the moment they were born but my partner was not keen. I couldn't blame him really. They are expensive and take effort and money was tight. But thankfully when the pups were about 11 weeks old and i'd subtly dropped puppies into conversations like a hundred times, it was decided we'd take a road trip to check the little critters out. I had wanted a girl as i thought there'd be a better chance of a bitch and a dog getting along than two dogs. We made the long trip by car to just outside of Canberra. The car loaded up with gear and I was so excited to see Natasha again and see all those lovely pups. There were two pups that were possibilities for us and as much as I thought I wanted a girl, this one boy certainly caught my attention. His name was Adonys and he had a heart snap pattern on his head. He was cuddly too, something i didn't get with mr Oberon the independent one. So it was decided. Adonys would come home with us.

2 days later we picked him up on kurt way back home. He traveled so well.

I absolutely adore this boy. So snuggly yet he's got a lot of spunk. Heres a photo of his first day with Oberon.

And a photo on his own

He is now almost 6 months old and i think he is awesome. He is going to be a big boy. I'll show him a little but for now he is enjoying being best buddies with Oberon who adores him. They're attached at the hip these 2.

Endings and Beginnings

About 1 month ago, one of our first chooks, a plymouth rock, died. She succumbed to a paralysis tick. It took till now for me to bury her. I had kept her in the deep freezer till a time when i felt right. It was a difficult thing seeing her die. She convulsed while i tried to remove the tick, quite a shock witnessing the true end to her life. I didn't think i could bury her straight away even though i have buried chickens before.

Today I was given that message by the universe that it was time. The message came in the form of a dead rat. It turned up strangely by the pool and had died some time today. He needed to be buried. I took him down to the corner of the yard and dug his hole and buried him. I realised then that it was time to bury the hen. She had no name for her, often it takes a few weeks to decide a name for them but we knew her only a short time. So I dug her hole not far from the rat. It took a long while to dig that hole and a lot of energy and effort. During this time my thoughts strayed to the significance of burying her and the significance of burying her along with the rat. Is there meaning in this? I'm not sure. I'll think some more on that. I said some words to send her off to where ever her soul may take her. fly free!

And then there are the promises of beginnings. Our broody hen has been sitting on 15 eggs for 12 days now. Just 9 days to go till we get to see how many hatch. My guess is for 8 little chicks which will be a combination of light sussex and polish, and maybe some wyandottes if we're lucky. Broody is doing a great job but i do think 15 eggs is too many. So heres to a great year full of lots of promise. The excitement of new endeavours both chookie and not chookie. I will show the dogs starting in March and i am making a lot of effort for success in other areas of my life.

A comparison

The green egg from the Araucana on the right and a normal Wyandotte egg on the left.

Green eggs......

Ever wondered where the term green eggs and ham came from? I figured it was from some dodgy off eggs but maybe these special eggs were from the Araucana chicken.

From wiki:

"History: The Araucana originally comes from the Arauca Provence of Northern Chile, from before the time of the Spanish conquest, and are a mix of two breeds – the Collonca (a blue egg laying, rumples, clean –faced chicken) and the Quetros (a pinkish-brown egg layer with tail and ear tufts). Nowdays Araucana come as ‘rumpless’ or ‘rumped’. Rumpless do not have the last spinal vertebrae, an uropygium (parson’s nose) or tail feathers, while the rumped varieties have a normal tail. In America only the rumpless birds are recognised as Araucana, but here in Australia, as in the United Kingdom, both rumped and rumpless are recognised. The large ear tufts of the Quetros survive as a trait of Araucana, but usually they are not nearly as extravagant in size as the original."

We're lucky to have an Araucana of our own. Her name is Falcon and she is my favorite of all the hens. She's got a rock star hairdo and just today she laid her first ever egg. A light shade of green. I'll get some photos later of the egg. She was fairly nervous around us to begin with but now comes p to me inquisitively. I like that she looks like a wild bird, and she acts like one too when she's defending the coop from pigeons and bush turkeys. So here is miss Falcon. Mostly black with red feathers on her chest and some speckled feathers on her head.